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August Mystery Book Club Discussion Goes West

July 27, 2012

For our August discussion, we are reading two very different thrillers set in very different locations and timeframes. The first one involves a suspicious death in the English countryside. The second one involves a series of murders/suicides in San Francisco. Join us at the Antioch Branch on August 27 at 7:00 p.m. to express your views on both.

Gone West by Carola Dunn. This is the 20th mystery in the long running Daisy Dalrymple mystery series. The year is 1926. It is September when Daisy’s old school friend, Sybil Sutherby, contacts her regarding the mysterious decline in health of her employer. Her employer is noted author Humphrey Birtwhistle, who pens westerns under a pseudonym. Because of his long illness, Sybil has actually been writing his stories. Sales have increased and so has demand for the stories. When Humphrey "goes west" (a British idiom meaning a person has died), Doctor Knox, a close family friend, refuses to sign the death certificate because he can't cite a cause. Daisy's husband, Chief Detective Inspector Alec Fletcher, comes from London to join the local police in the subsequent investigation. He is not too happy that Daisy is involved again in a murder investigation. A cozy mystery.

The Dirty Secrets Club by Meg Gardiner. Dr. Jo Beckett is a forensic psychiatrist. She does not perform medical autopsies on the dead. She performs psychological autopsies. Her job is to determine the mental state of the victims of murder or suicide. Following a string of high profile murders and suicides in San Francisco, she is called in to investigate. Teamed with SFPD Lieutenant Amy Tang, Jo begins to dig for the truth. What she finds is a sadistic psychopath and a shadowy group known as the Dirty Secrets Club, whose members all have shameful events in their past. Jo and Amy are close to catching the individual behind the deaths when Jo receives a threatening letter detailing a dirty secret of her own. This is Meg Gardiner’s U.S. debut novel.